Article II of the Constitution
- Clause 2 Electors
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Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
- Clause 3 Electoral College Count
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The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.
From John Adams to John Taylor, 17 December 1814
In your fifth page You Say “Mr. Adams calls our Attention to hundreds of wise and virtuous Patricians, mangled and bleeding Victims of popular Fury.” and gravely counts up several Victims of democratic Rage as proofs that Democracy is more pernicious than Monarchy or Aristocracy.” Is this fair, sir? Do you deny any one of my Facts? I do not say that Democracy has been more pernicious, on the whole, and in the long run, than Monarchy or Aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as Aristocracy or Monarchy. But while it lasts it is more bloody than either. I beseech you, Sir to recollect, the time when my three Volumes of “Defence” were written and printed, in 1786, 1787 and 1788. The History of the University, had not then furnis[, Start insertion,h, End,]ed me with a document I have Since Seen; an Alphabetical Dictionary of the Names and Qualities of Persons “mangled and bleeding Victims of democratic rage and popular fury” in France during the Despotism of Democracy in that Country, which Napoleon ought to be immortalised for calling “Ideology.”
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The reason our USA Founding Fathers establish the electoral college was because they feared mob rule and they understood the dangers of direct elections. Then you had Alexander Hamilton who set the seeds to turn America into an Aristocracy/Oligarchy. The fight back against the Oligarchy has historically lent itself to political populism and the people having more of a say in our government, and while the Oligarchy has generally waved the white flag to surrender to some of the mobs ideas when they become too raucous, generally the Oligarchy has managed to control the mob without most of the mob knowing it. This has often been to the detriment of the United States. That white flag has more times than not been disingenuous and just a ploy to achieve its actual goals to maintain the power of the oligarchy, keep its crony clubs unfettered by making class mobility more difficult and limited, and to destroy any new powers in the economy that might be or might become their competition.
We saw this with the destruction of the Southern Textile families who supported politicians the richer, and often Northern, Oligarchy didn’t like. In more recent times we saw the Oligarchy at work when the goto search engine was destroyed, then the old yahoo was destroyed, and all search power was given to google and to a lesser degree Microsoft. We saw it when the old myspace was destroyed and the power was given to Facebook. With that transfer of wealth and power, that gave the oligarchy more power to spy on opponents and to pick winners and losers in the larger economy and perhaps even to some degree in the micro economy. Does google refuse to put your business on the map where people can find you or do they have you a block over? When you search for a given business is their competition more likely to pop up than the business for which you were in search?
The bankruptcy of J.C. Penney may at least partly be blamed on google and google pretending J.C. Penney were demoted in search because they had broken some seo rule. I am not a huge fan of COX Inc. but how often do you see any of their news organization on the google news page? Now, I guess it is possible that COX Inc. is retarded in leadership and does not want their news listed on the google news page but I kind of doubt that.
So anyway, the Oligarchy is thriving under our current system of electing their idiots to power so they have no desire to change the system. Some even want to make the electoral college even more irrelevant. But, the American people need to demand that the electoral college be relevant.
How can it be made relevant? Well, one thing is to look at how it was originally designed.
The First Design
In the first design of the Electoral College (described in Article II,
Section 1 of the Constitution):
Each State was allocated a number of Electors equal to the number of its
U.S. Senators (always 2) plus the number of its U.S. Representatives (which
may change each decade according to the size of each State’s population as
determined in the decennial census). This arrangement built upon an
earlier compromise in the design of the Congress itself and thus satisfied
both large and small States.
The manner of choosing the Electors was left to the individual State
legislatures, thereby pacifying States suspicious of a central national
government.
Members of Congress and employees of the federal government were
specifically prohibited from serving as an Elector in order to maintain
the balance between the legislative and executive branches of the federal
government.
Each State’s Electors were required to meet in their respective States
rather than all together in one great meeting. This arrangement, it was
thought, would prevent bribery, corruption, secret dealing, and foreign
influence.
In order to prevent Electors from voting only for a “favorite son” of their
own State, each Elector was required to cast two votes for president, at
least one of which had to be for someone outside their home State. The
idea, presumably, was that the winner would likely be everyone’s second favorite choice.
And the casting of two votes is important.
The electoral votes were to be sealed and transmitted from each of the
States to the President of the Senate who would then open them before
both houses of the Congress and read the results.
The person with the most electoral votes, provided that it was an absolute
majority (at least one over half of the total), became president. Whoever
obtained the next greatest number of electoral votes became vice
president — an office which they seem to have invented for the occasion
since it had not been mentioned previously in the Constitutional
Convention.
In the event that no one obtained an absolute majority in the Electoral
College or in the event of a tie vote, the U.S. House of Representatives, as
the chamber closest to the people, would choose the president from
among the top five contenders. They would do this (as a further
concession to the small States) by allowing each State to cast only one vote with an absolute majority of the States being required to elect a
president. The vice presidency would go to whatever remaining
contender had the greatest number of electoral votes. If that, too, was
tied, the U.S. Senate would break the tie by deciding between the two.
That system might not have been perfect but it is better than what we have now where we are not even sure whether our elections are honest or not. But the bottom line is that some major change is needed in how we choose a President because we can’t afford to keep allowing the Oligarchy (some of whom are not even American) to make the Presidency of the US a bought office mostly run by them.
So, to get our Republic back what changes are needed.
1. The size of the House of Representatives needs to be increased from 435 to 43,500.
2. The electors should again cast 2 votes for President. One vote should be based on the people’s vote as is pretty much done now. The 2nd vote should be for who they think will best serve the interest of the American people. The 2nd vote should be different from the first vote.
3. The electors and not the President should decide who the VP should be and who the AG should be.
I realize what I am suggesting will never happen but it is just a thought. LOL